


In All Things Honorable

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Banishment, F/M, Groping, Jealousy, Loyalty, Rejection, Sexual Harassment, Treason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 04:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17615381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Sabine rejects her king.





	In All Things Honorable

**Author's Note:**

> Set before Terrier. Based on Sabine's account of her banishment from Corus. 
> 
> Warning for sexual harassment. Please read with caution.

In All Things Honorable

Sabine—dressed in a silk gown that felt more uncomfortable than a rough canvas sack on her—regretted being convinced by her family to attend another one of King Roger’s drunken revelries. Hoping to blend into the ballroom’s background, she trie to fade into the wall behind the table groaning under a dizzying array of Tyran and Tusaine wines, but the tapestries were so extravagant that she feared they only drew more attention to her and the dress her traitor family had bullied her into wearing. 

“You look beautiful tonight.” A slightly slurred voice confirmed Sabine’s fears about standing out against the tapestries, and, turning her head to see who had addressed her, she spotted King Roger and immediately recognized her strategic error in placing herself so near the drinks. 

King Roger had wandering hands that roamed far beyond his wife’s ailing body. During balls, he would often slip into the shadows to conduct reconnaissance missions, exploring the terrain beneath many a lady’s gown with or without her permission. 

Sabine’s mind reeled as she sought to devise a way to extricate herself from conversation with her king before he groped clumsily at her. 

“You should wear dresses more often.” King Roger fixed her with a smile that was almost a leer, his eyes—drunk with desire—riveted on her chest, plunging beneath her neckline like probing fingers. “They bring out your curves, my dear.” 

“I didn’t ask for your fashion advice, sire.” Sabine was desperate to change the situation from disconcertingly intimate to appropriately formal because propriety had never been more appealing than when Roger’s gaze lingered on her breasts. She wished she could slide back a step to put some distance between them without banging into the wall behind her. 

“You would please me if you wore dresses more often.” King Roger closed the gap between them, and she could smell the claret that had intoxicated him on his breath and in the splotches staining his crimson doublet. Her stomach squirmed at the stench, and her skin crawled when his hand gripped her wrist like a manacle. “You’re one of my knights. You should always seek to please me.” 

“As Your Majesty’s leal knight, I seek to please you on the battlefield with my sword.” Sabine jerked her wrist sharply downward where his thumb encircled it, breaking free of his grasp to remind him that she was a warrior not to be trifled with, and thinking that she would have threatened to remove the king’s sword with her own if those words wouldn’t have gotten her beheaded. 

“You owe me your service in all things.” King Roger growled like a Cavall mastiff denied meat, face swelling scarlet as his doublet as he grew from a lecherous drunk to an enraged one. “You’re my sworn knight.” 

“I owe you my service in all things honorable, sire.” Sabine shaped her words into a steel blade as she danced on the knife’s edge of correcting her king, praying to the Goddess that she wouldn’t plummet to her death. 

“It’s an honor to pleasure your king.” King Roger’s palms pawed at her breasts. 

“Dare to touch me again, and I’ll break all the bones in your hands,” snapped Sabine, slapping his hands away from her chest, and not caring if it was treason to threaten her king. 

“Are you refusing me?” King Roger’s thunderous tone—heavy with the accusation that no woman had ever had the audacity to deny him her body—echoed throughout the teeming ballroom, freezing dancing couples in mid-twirl and silencing gossiping guests in the middle of recounting the latest court scandals. 

Queen Alysy glared at her with the venom of a Carthaki cobra as if Sabine had made her husband stray—as if spurning the king’s attentions was a worse crime than accepting them—and her family stared at her as if she had somehow shamed their family name by refusing to disgrace herself by committing adultery with her king. 

“I refuse only dishonor.” Sabine’s chin lifted in defiance of the hard judgment written into every other face in the crowded ballroom. 

“You threatened your king.” King Roger scowled with the memory of her warning to keep his hands off her. “That’s treason.” 

“A misunderstanding, sire.” Sabine’s grandfather, the lord of Masbolle, stepped forward with a bow. His hair was storm gray and his skin wrinkled as old laundry but his tone didn’t waver as he defended her when the rest of her kin studied their polished shoes for suddenly appearing scuffs. “Lady Sabine would never attack Your Majesty. She is devoted to destroying Your Majesty’s enemies.” 

“Let her destroy my enemies in the hill country then to resolve this misunderstanding and prove her loyalty to the Crown.” King Roger banished her from court but looking at the sycophants surrounding her forever inebriated king and jealous queen, Sabine never wanted to return to Corus. 

“I would be honored to serve Your Majesty in the hill country.” Sabine curtsied to hide the fact that she was probably the happiest exile in Tortall’s checkered history.


End file.
